Split territories: the Bom Retiro district and the “Parque Do Gato” housing project in São Paulo

Abstract

The new economic configuration of the late capitalism and its neoliberal ideology indicate sophisticated strategies of financial / developer estate market in which the territorializing effects are anchored in increasingly uniform patterns produced by the reclusion forms in the closed built environments that usually deny the public and collective spaces. This paper discusses these issues in light of a housing project built in the central area of the municipality of São Paulo, in the Bom Retiro district, in 2003, which is named Parque do Gato. Besides, it reveals some aspects of its insertion on the urban fabric that, in opposition of the project utopia based on the territorial articulation with the district through the implementing of a park and other connections, it remained isolated in the side of a lot of vacant, abandoned and underutilized land and properties, besides the disconnected uses. The observation of this issue was by the methods of spatial interpretation, including the analysis of the morphological patterns, current land use and the appropriation by users.  Regardless more sophisticated methods of post-occupation assessment, this research sought to set the territorial features in the borders of two well-delimited parts of the district, observing the historic processes, highlighting the phenomena that contribute to the constraint ness of the places and the extension of the non-places, as a strategy of the estate market to create future opportunities in new achievements.